Josh Mack blogging at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, and occasionally on; bicycles, politics, Brooklyn, parenting, crafts, and good reading. Currently helping to build a new NYC neighborhood news site - nearsay.com, that celebrates the voices that make our city. Subscribe to the daily newsletter it gives you what you need to know.

August 24, 2010

Some of my good friends are food and drink writers. I get to eat well, and (when not on IV antibiotics) often drink well too. I give them advice on how to use the Internet to reach new fans (good students they each have thousands of twitter followers now their following every sip and morsel) and also occasionally build them sites. This has its upsides as I love helping my friends (and authors in general) but I also hate maintaining them so over the past few months I've moved two of them over to TypePad. I also work for Six Apart so while it makes sense for professional reasons, it just so happens that TypePad is a great platform. Both blogs are built using the stock Mosaic design with sized header images. Importing their old posts was a breeze.

One of them belongs to Melissa Clark, an award-winning author who also writes a column in the NY Times. And the other which I put up today belongs to Alice Feiring, a wine writer, author, and champion of biodynamic wine. Alice is the anti-Robert Parker. Her old site had actually been nominated for a James Beard Award and was up against Epicurious and others, so it took a bit for me to want to move it.

August 17, 2010

What helps is when you actually sit down and try to jot some notes down from a TED "lecture" on the "subject" of "creativity", and all you end up with are three meanderingly abrupt sentences that say things like "monkeys play with balls", "humans like the colour red", "cheese was developed by mistake".

The feeling that you've wasted your time is so powerful it's almost existentially thrilling.

August 13, 2010

What is viral media and how do you make it or how our society celebrates people with personality disorders, mania, and narcissitic tendencies which are fodder for couch potatoes and the masses of us who are bored at work. One of the interesting sub-texts of this presentation is how major media picks up these trends as Jonah keeps appearing on the news to talk about his great projects.

August 12, 2010

Earlier today I started an e-mail with Yep which was then replied to with Yup, this went on with yep and yup starting multiple e-mails. I began to wonder if Yup was more correct or if it was a regional thing, or if someone was poking fun at me. Luckily, Urban Dictionary came to the rescue.

Yep - An absolute yes that implies far more than a simple yes. Alternately, an affirmative response with minimal energy.

When someone tells you that a site going down midday is bad what else can you say? My use was a bit of both.

is a generic term of agreement issued often by a non-listening party, typically used while performing an additional important task, such as watching tv.

So, given that a previous Yup was used in an e-mail thread in which someone said a server going down in the middle of the day is bad, seems actually to be a correct response while multi-tasking and needing to say something. Yep, I for one feel better.

August 11, 2010

Welcome to the iTunes Store customer support. My name is Gaurav and let me assure you that I would do my best today to assist you.

First of all I would like to apologize for the delay in response from us, due to unexpected large volume of requests. I know it must have been difficult for you to wait for a response from us and I deeply regret that.

I'm sorry to hear that you were unable to watch the movie "Kick-Ass". I know how upsetting it would be. I would like to convey my sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Quit with 10 minutes to go, it has been oh so difficult and upsetting, thanks Apple.

Will this classic push game have yet another life? Was just thinking about this game and how its push technology was just about two decades too early. Went to the site and saw a cryptic message dated June 17, 2010 form the Jellyvision staff. So stay tuned.

August 07, 2010

Only seven people know the secret of the nooks and crannies on the right, others know bits and pieces. One by one the agents of Spectre have been working to collect these men these men in order to crack the code. 007 your mission is to infiltrate their organization by masquerading as the expert who knows the secret the bigger nooks, the ones that hold pools of butter and jam.

I wonder if people went through the same thing in the mid-1400s as they sat in coffee shops with their pesky paper books? I can imagine a coffee shop owner demanding that a patron remove his book from an establishment that only allowed spoken communication.

And how long will it take before e-books are accepted as equals with their paper counterparts?

The answer to that question might come sooner than we think. A report last week by the Center for the Digital Future at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California found that people were quickly moving away from print in favor of digital offerings (although the reports noted that readers don’t entirely trust digital news yet).